Today is 4 weeks on the road. Doesn’t feel that long.
We had a wonderful morning with our friends Beth and Dan and then went through getting ready to leave for quite a while, finally leaving about 3pm.
We stopped at Lyons Lake…

My #1 mission for the day is to totally unpack the van. Go through all the boxes and shuffle some things around based on usage. This will be the 2nd time I’ve done the usage shuffle. And, while the van is empty go to vacuum and wash the car.
We talked ’til about 10. Dan was done with his project and planned to golf in the afternoon. Beth walked Sherman while I worked on the van. She took some great Sherman pics!

After Winnipeg I tried free wifi in every city. The fastest download I found was 2.5mbs in a corp Starbucks. About the slowest broadband out there. I thought!
But; the average found was 0.25mbs. Yes that’s right. 0.25mbs!
This just isn’t enough throughput to do the posts with photos. So I’ll catch-up in small batches. I’m back in the US with 20-40mbs LTE. Yea! This was my biggest frustration being in little towns.
Here’s how the megabit/sec math goes:
A megabit is 1,000,000 (1 million) bits. So .25mbs is 250,000 bits/sec.
I was used to a range of 50-200mbs in SoCal. That’s 50 million – 200 million bits / sec.
This was like using a modem. Anyone remember using modems and they were magic! Even at 9.6kbs. And then 14.4? Wow!
Some later modems got as high as 330,000bits/sec.

I get up and take Sherman for his morning walk. He is totally mesmerized by squirrels. Rabbits are good. Cats are good. Birds are good. But squirrels are the best.The squirrel’s playground…
I think I’ve found a place for him to run that’s fenced in behind the Montessori School than has taken over a prior public elementary school. But, as Sherman and I walk the perimeter of the fence I find two open places. One is the actual entrance about 3 feet wide. The other is the space under a double gate about 8 feet wide. Too much to cover. Mr. Sherman would definitely find these during his own fence inspection. This is not an issue today as Beth and I are going to a beach about an hour away on Winnipeg Lake. A lake as big as the Great Lakes. It has tides. You can’t see across it.

I awoke the first morning, Sunday, and thought about how long to stay. How long is not an imposition? I thought leaving Tuesday would be a good. When I told Beth that I thought I’d leave on Tuesday, she said she hoped I’d stay longer. Nice… 🙂
After a homey breakfast, Dan continued working on his project, and Beth, Sherman and I walked downtown to the Winnipeg Art Gallery. I wanted to see a show of Inuit Sculpture. The exhibit of historical sculpture was closed. There was a musical event in the same gallery.(more…)